2001-2011: A Pivotal Decade of U.S. Diplomacy in the Middle East

On the morning of September 11, 2001, when hijacked jetliners brought down the World Trade Center towers, attacked the Pentagon, and killed passengers and crew in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, Micaela Schweitzer-Bluhm was in her first week of Arabic language training at the Foreign Service Institute in Arlington, Virginia. The devastating attacks redefined U.S. diplomatic engagement in the Middle East and the experience of Micaela’s generation of Foreign Service Arabists, who committed years of training to become proficient in Arabic. In her talk at the Belfast Free Library, Micaela will recount her experiences as a U.S. diplomat working on U.S. policy in the Middle East before and in the tumultuous decade following the attacks of 9/11.

Presenter Micaela Schweitzer-Bluhm represented the United States around the world for 26 years, leading U.S. diplomatic teams and advancing U.S. principles of democratic governance. Micaela spent most of her career in the Middle East and Southeast Europe, including as the Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Skopje, North Macedonia, and in different capacities at the U.S. embassies in Zagreb, Cairo, Baghdad, Tunis, and Kathmandu and at the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem. Micaela, her husband, and their three children have called Belfast home since 2017. On retirement from the Foreign Service, Micaela took on a new challenge as Executive Director of the Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, publisher of The Maine Monitor. She is on the boards of the Maine Press, the Maine Freedom of Information Coalition, the Waldo County YMCA, and the Belfast Rotary Club.